You’ve said that making “Fixin to Die” was a return to what originally played as a young man.

It was a record I was trying to make for twenty years. It was always, well, let’s make a Blues kind of record, a big Pop record, something like that. Finally it was the label (who said) we want you to make your Blues record. It was great. The Avett Brothers did a tremendous job, it was cool get to make that record and record some of those songs. Some of those were the first batch I wrote when I was sixteen, seventeen years old. A lot of them I played in my solo acoustic repertoire for years. There’s a lot of depth to that record.

Some of songs were from high school days.

If a song holds up for that long, that many years, then you know it deserves to be on a record. If you keep going back to a song (you know) it’s good, this song has merit, this is a real song. It was funny, because a lot of the songs were about personal things that happened over the years but connected still. You want try to evoke the feeling you felt when you first wrote that song.

You recorded “Fixin to Die” in a church.

In Asheville, NC called Echo Mountain Studio. That record, we had a very limited time to make it. We was recorded and mixed in nine days. It was cool to get back to that style of recording, working hard, and letting creativity grow. It was really nice, definitely one of my favorites.

When your first album came out in ‘94 the sound of made sense – fresh while very familiar. I was surprised to read about negative responses to it.

In Europe there’s the issue of race in music, it was hard for the European press to wrap their heads around this kid from Philly allowed to rap and play delta blues. I don’t know, I’m just doing it because it’s the music I like. When it first came out there was a certain amount of pressure on us because it was the kind of music that was cultural, ethnic and serious.

There was some, especially in the press, who said how can they do this? We just did it and we’ve been doing it for twenty years and along the way you get respect. It’s not like a weird thing for white people to rap or anybody, from any nationality to rap. Everybody around the world raps, it’s been going on for thirty years. Its part of the culture and part of the culture I adapted growing up with it.

About This Blog

The WAE: Wilmington-area Arts & Entertainment is dedicated to experiencing, discussing and promoting the arts in Southeastern N.C. From theater and all manner of music to visual art, dance, festivals and more, The WAE is populated by people who are immersed in local A&E. If it’s about A&E in Southeastern N.C., then we’re all about it.